Real-time telecommunications systems have conventionally operated in a communicant-driven mode, in which the first step in a message exchange is that of a communicant transmitting a request for a channel to another specific communicant. The request may be accepted by the second communicant, with acceptance followed by a message exchange, which may be in real time, over a channel set up by the network following acceptance of the initial “request for message exchange” (hereinafter, “RFME”). The messages exchanged may be oral (e.g., by telephone), electronic (e.g., “instant messaging” or e-mail over the Internet), physical (e.g., by telegram), or any combination thereof.
As used herein, the term “telecommunications network” refers to all elements of an electrical, electronic, optical, or acoustical communications system, including those elements involved in the carriage, routing, switching, storage, forwarding, modulating, encrypting, or decrypting of messages, but excluding those elements which, in a particular instance, are defined herein as “communicants”.
As used herein, the term “communicant” refers to an originator or a recipient of a message carried by the network.
As used herein, the term “addressable device” refers to a device to which messages may be sent using a network address. An addressable device may be either a part of the network, or a communicant, depending upon its function. For example, in the public switched telephone network (hereinafter, “PSTN”), when a person answers a ringing telephone, the telephone is an addressable device, and the person is a communicant. In contrast, when a telephone answering machine automatically answers a call, the telephone answering machine is both an addressable device and a communicant.
The PSTN is perhaps the most ubiquitous example of a real-time telecommunications network operating in this conventional, communicant-driven mode. In its most general form, an addressable device (e.g., a station device, which may be an ordinary telephone), is caused by a communicant to go “off-hook”, and, upon receipt of a dial tone, to transmit an RFME to another station device by dialing the telephone number that constitutes that device's network address. The station device then accepts this request by itself going off-hook, and a full-duplex audio channel is opened between the two station devices. Station devices and full-duplex audio channels are conventionally related in a one-to-one fashion (i.e., in a single-channel protocol), such that a station device can support only one concurrent full-duplex audio channel.
This mode of operation is characterized by a familiar set of failure conditions which diminish its utility to communicants, to the operator of the telecommunications system, and to the economic and social entities served by the telecommunications system (e.g., people, businesses, society as a whole).
Some of these failure conditions are:
Receiver Station Busy: The addressable device to which an RFME is addressed may be engaged in another message exchange at the time the request is transmitted. Insofar as the system architecture does not permit stations to interact with multiple simultaneous real-time channels, the message exchange desired by the initiating communicant cannot occur at that time. An example of this in the world of conventional telephony is a busy signal.
Addressable Device Not Responsive: The addressable device to which the RFME is addressed, although not at that time engaged in another message exchange, does not respond to the RFME. An example of this in the world of conventional telephony is where a telephone rings, but it is not answered.
Communicant Not Responsive: The addressable device to which the RFME is addressed responds to the request by going off hook, but the communicant with whom the initiating communicant desires to communicate does not respond to the addressable device. An example of this in the world of conventional telephony is where an answering machine answers a call.
Network Failure/Channel Teardown: A communications channel is torn down absent a valid request from at least one of the communicants, or a designed initiative of the network itself. An example of this is teardown of a wireless telephony channel when one of the wireless telephones loses contact with the network.
Each of these failure conditions diminishes the utility derived from the telecommunications network. The time and the expense invested by the initiating communicant in the attempt to establish real-time message exchange with the other communicant fails in each case to yield the sought-after utility and so are lost. Similarly, revenues and/or other utility associated with network usage are lost by the network operator and/or network owner.
Other opportunity costs may be incurred by the initiating communicant insofar as his addressable device, while engaged in a failed attempt to establish communications with another communicant, is not available to initiate or accept other message exchanges.
A familiar and ubiquitous set of solutions has developed with regard to these failure conditions, although each of these solutions has shortcomings, and fails to achieve the maximum possible utility sought by communicants and/or by the network's operators and/or owners.
Queuing is widely used as a solution to the problems caused by single-channel protocol that many networks have imposed upon communicants.
A typical queuing solution eliminates some or all denials of RFME by incorporating a network layer upstream of the communicant in the network architecture. This intermediary layer can accept multiple concurrent requests for message exchange addressed to the communicant, manage multiple concurrent real-time message channels, and hand off each such channel to the communicant as the communicant's addressable device becomes available. A familiar example of this class of queuing solution is seen in PBX and similar devices, in conjunction with PSTN hunt groups or functionally similar PSTN provisioning.
A striking feature of the queuing solution to denial of RFME in single-channel protocol networks is that the initiating communicant, while queued for the communicant to which he addressed the RFME, is functionally segregated from all other network communicants. His addressable device is dedicated to waiting in a queue, and cannot accept RFMEs or initiate an RFME to other communicants. Enormous amounts of time are lost by communicants being “placed on hold”. This inefficiency, from the queued communicant's standpoint, can be mitigated somewhat if he, too, has a queuing solution which allows him to initiate and receive RFMEs while the outgoing RFME is queued.
Another familiar solution to failures of communicant-initiated RFME entails reducing the communications mode from real-time to store-and-forward.
The conventional telephone answering machine is an example of this class of solution, wherein the communicant's addressable device is available but the communicant himself is not responsive for one reason or another.
Telco “voice mail” is another example, which, depending on the implementation, may also involve a queuing component. In any case, when the outcome of an RFME addressed to a specific addressable device is not accepted (i.e., the addressable device is not available or does not expressly accept the RFME) the network offers to record a message from the initiating communicant which may subsequently be made available to the addressee.
All of the solutions to the inefficiencies and lack of utility inherent in communicant-initiated networks are aimed at mitigation, and do not alter the role of the network as a passive entity.
In contrast, Network Initiated Communications (hereinafter, “NIC”) offers an alternative mode which differs fundamentally from the conventional, communicant-initiated mode of establishing communications between communicants.
NIC offers:
1. A solution to avoid losing utility from the failure conditions described earlier, rather than a solution which mitigates the effects of such lost utility; and
2. Opportunities for exploitation of novel classes of utility inherent in present telecommunications technology, such as wireless networks.
One object of the present invention is therefore to overcome the disadvantages of the communicant-initiated methods and systems for communications by providing a network-initiated method and system for communications.
Another object of the present invention is to allow for new types of communications, not possible with conventional communicant-initiated communication methods and systems.